Sunday, April 12, 2015

[Continuing coverage of the UN’s 2015 conference on killer robots. See all posts in this series here.]

Before I start blogging the kickoff of this week’s United Nations meeting on killer robots, a little background is
called for, both about the issue and my views on it.

I have worked on this issue in different capacities for many years now.
(In fact, I proposed a ban on autonomous weapons as early as 1988, and
again in 2002
and 2004.)
In the present context, the first thing I want to say is about the
Obama administration’s 2012 policy
directive on Autonomy in Weapon Systems. It was not so much a
decision made by the military as a decision made for the
military after long internal resistance and
at least a decade of debate within the U.S. Department of Defense.
You may have heard that the directive imposed a moratorium on killer
robots. It did not. Rather, as I
explained in 2013 in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, it
“establishes a framework for managing legal, ethical, and technical
concerns, and signals to developers and vendors that the Pentagon is
serious about autonomous weapons.” As a Defense Department spokesman
told me directly, the directive “is not a moratorium on anything.” It’s
a full-speed-ahead policy.

What counts as "semi-autonomous"?Top: Artist's conception of Lockheed Martin's
planned Long Range Anti-Ship Missile in flight.Bottom: The Obama administration would
define the original T-800 Terminator as
merely "semi-autonomous."

The story of how so many people misinterpreted or were misled by the
directive is complicated, and I won’t get into details right now, but
basically the policy was rather cleverly constructed by strong
proponents of autonomous weapons to deflect concerns about actual
emerging (and some existing) weaponry by suggesting that the real issue
is futuristic machines that independently “select and engage” targets
of their own choosing. These are supposedly placed under close scrutiny
by the policy — but not really. The directive defines a separate category
of “semi-autonomous” weapons which in reality includes everything that
is happening today or is likely to happen in the near future as we
head down the road toward Terminator territory. A prime example
is Lockheed Martin’s Long Range Anti-Ship
Missile, a program now entering “accelerated acquisition” with
initial deployment slated for 2018. This wonder-weapon can autonomously
steer itself around emergent threats, scan a wide area searching for an
enemy fleet, identify target ships among civilian vessels and others in
the vicinity, and plan its attack in collaboration with sister missiles
in a salvo. It’s classified as “semi-autonomous,” which under the
policy means it’s given a green light and does not require senior
review. In fact, as I’ve argued,
under the bizarre definition in the administration’s policy, The
Terminator himself (excuse me, itself) could qualify as a merely
“semi-autonomous” weapon system.

If it sounds like I’m casting the United States as the villain here,
let me be clear: the rest of the world is in the game, and they’re
right behind us, but we happen to be the leader, in both technology and
policy. For every type of drone (and here I can be accused of
conflating issues: today’s drones are not autonomous, although some
call them semi-autonomous, but the existence of a close relationship
between drone and autonomous weapons technologies is undeniable) that
the United States has in use or development, China has produced a
similar model, and when the U.S. Navy opened its Laboratory for
Autonomous Systems Research in 2012, Russia responded
by establishing its own military robotics lab the following year. Some
have characterized Russia as “taking
the lead,” but the reality is
better characterized by the
statement of a Russian academician that “From the point of view of
theory, engineering and design ideas, we are not in the last place in
the world.”

The Big Dog that has Russia's military
leadership barking.

At the 2014 LAWS meeting, Russian and Chinese statements were as bland
and obtuse as their American counterparts, but it’s clear that, like
the rest of the world, those countries are watching closely what we do,
and showing that they are not ready to accept “last place.” Russian
deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin, head of military industries,
penned an
article in Rossiya Gazeta in 2014 that amounts to perhaps
the closest thing to an official Russian policy response to the
publicly released U.S. directive: a clarion call to Russian industry,
mired as it is in post-Soviet mediocrity, to step up to the challenge
posed by American achievements like “Big Dog” and to
develop “robotic systems that are fully integrated in the command and
control system, capable not only to gather intelligence and to receive
from the other components of the combat system, but also on their own
strike.” China eschews such straightforwardly belligerent declarations, and
interestingly, the Chinese
closing statement at last year’s meeting rebuked the American
suggestion to focus on the process of legality reviews for new weapons,
on the grounds that this would exclude countries which did not yet have
autonomous weapons to review — a suggestion of possible Chinese support
for a more activist approach to arms control. But China’s activity in
areas of drones, robots, and artificial intelligence speak for
themselves; China will not accept last place either.

My question for those setting U.S. policy is this: Given that we are
the world’s leader in this technology, but with only a narrow lead at
best, why are we not at least trying to lead in a different direction,
away from a global robot arms race? Why are we not saying that,
of course, we will develop autonomous weapons if necessary, but we
would prefer an arms-control approach, based on strong moral principles
and the overwhelming sentiment of the world’s people (including
strong majorities among U.S. military personnel)? Why not? Why are
we not even signaling interest in such an approach? Comments are open,
fellas.

In
the days to come, I’ll report on both the expert talks and country
statements, and whatever else I see going on in Geneva, as well as dig
deeper into the underlying issues as they come up. More tomorrow...

1 comment:

I am in complete agreement here, control the situation (the need to go to war) before creating all of the pieces in a real-life game of Risk using our tax dollars and risking our lives in a different type of global war.